Protesting Soviet Government's Kidnapping of a Chinese Diplomat

CHINESE Vice-Foreign Minister Yu Chan summoned Soviet Ambassador to China V.S. Tolstikov on the morning of January 25 and handed him a note of protest. The note lodged a strong protest with the Soviet Government against Soviet authorities' fascist atrocities of kidnapping a diplomat of the Chinese Embassy in the Soviet Union and brutal treatment of China's international train. Full text of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs note follows: In a verbal statement read out to the Chinese Ambassador to the Soviet Union on January 19, 1974, the Director of the First Far Eastern Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry slanderously charged Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang, attache of the Chinese Embassy in the Soviet Union, with "trying to obtain espionage information of a military character from a Soviet citizeness," and unwarrantedly ordered his expulsion from the Soviet Union. This is a mean act of retaliation taken by the Soviet Government against the expulsion of V.I. Marchcnko and four other Soviet spies by the Chinese Government. Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang was being transferred home upon completion of his tour of duty in the Chinese Embassy in the Soviet Union. The Peking-Ulan Bator-Moscow international train No. 8 on which he was riding arrived at Irkutsk Station at 2:50 a.m. (Moscow time) on January 19, and the passengers aboard were all sleeping. Soviet police officers and men in white robes boarded the train. They stated that a Soviet citizen who had gotten off at the previous station Krasnoyarsk was found to be suffering from contagious black smallpox, and demanded that all passengers get off to submit to a "quarantine check." The Chinese train master repeatedly suggested to the Soviet side that since the passengers were asleep and it was much too cold outside, the quarantine personnel should get on board the train to make the check if it was necessary. The Soviet side obstinately refused and insisted that the passengers get off. Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang was awakened from his bed and got off the train along with other passengers for the quarantine check. But the Soviet quarantine personnel didn't check the Soviet passengers in carriage No. 5, who had come into contact with the alleged "black smallpox case." and passed over other passengers with a brief questioning and casual look. Only Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang, whose seat was in carriage No. 7, was subjected to detailed inquiry. They deliberately asserted that he "looked pale, had bloodshot eyes and was a complicated case," and forcibly detained him alone in the Quarantine Station, seating him next to some persons disguised as suspected contaminated cases. At this juncture, a female agent planted by the Soviet side and claiming to be an overseas Chinese accosted Kuan and tried to shove a picture folder into his hands. Whereupon, another Soviet woman dressed as a nurse cried: Don't pass things! Before her words were over, a group of ruffians led by a police lieutenant charged into the room. The lieutenant snatched the picture folder from the hands of the female agent, the others rushed forward in a body, and the so-called suspected cases who had been sitting in the room joined them in pushing Kuan in spite of his protests into a police car parked at the back-door of the Quarantine Station, by which he was forcibly taken to the Kirov district police station of Irkutsk. Immediately after the Soviet side kidnapped Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang, it declared the epidemic report to be unfounded, stopped the quarantine check and told the train to leave at once. At the police station, a police major unlawfully questioned Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang for 13 long hours. He ostentatiously took from the above-mentioned picture folder some planted "intelligence" and made against Kuan the slanderous charge of espionage, which Kuan sternly refuted. That night, Kuan was forcibly taken on board a plane and sent to Moscow. At the airport in Moscow, Kuan was again illegally questioned by the Soviet secret service in the presence of a representative of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. It was only after Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang made repeated protests that the Soviet side handed him over to the Chinese Embassy in the early hours of January 20. The above facts fully show that the kidnapping of Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang was an anti-China farce wholly stage-directed by the Soviet authorities. The method used was indeed shockingly clumsy and vile. The brazen kidnapping of Chinese diplomat Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang by the Soviet authorities in disregard of principles of international law aroused the utmost indignation of the entire crew and the Chinese passengers on the Chinese train, who made repeated strong protests to the Soviet side, demanded the immediate return of Comrade Kuan Heng-kuang and asked to get in touch with the Chinese Embassy in the Soviet Union. The Soviet side not only arbitrarily rejected all these, but moved up large numbers of policemen and secret agents to encircle the Chinese train, damaged all the brakes on the Chinese train, grabbed or tore up red signal flags on carriages used to halt the train, smashed a window and dispatched some fifty to sixty policemen and secret agents to forcibly escort the Chinese train to the Soviet-Mongolian border. The Chinese Government hereby lodges a strong protest with the Soviet Government against the Soviet authorities' fascist atrocities of kidnapping a Chinese diplomat and brutal treatment of China's international train and demands that the Soviet Government guarantee against the recurrence of similar incidents in the future. Otherwise, the Soviet Government must bear full responsibility for all the consequences arising therefrom.